Codecademy: A Slick, Fun Way To Teach Yourself How To Program

It’s a web-based, interactive programming tutorial that holds your hand and walks you through the basics of JavaScript. At this point it’s just getting started — the lessons only go as far as ‘While’ loops — but it clearly has loads of potential for one key reason: it actually feels fun. Website: http://www.codecademy.com

Programming Languages Reference Sheets

syntax for common tasks in a side-by-side format Scripting Languages: PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby Embeddable Languages: Tcl, Lua, JavaScript, Io Shell Languages: Bash, Zsh, AppleScript, PowerShell C Style Languages: C, C++, Objective C, Java, C# Pascal Style Languages: Pascal, Ada, PL/SQL, SQL/PSM Lisp Dialects: Common Lisp, Scheme, Clojure, Emacs Lisp Type Inference Languages: Standard ML, OCaml, Scala, Haskell Declarative Languages: Prolog, Erlang, Oz Concatenative Languages: Forth, PostScript, Factor Computer Algebra Software: Mathematica, Sage, Maxima Numerical Analysis Software: MATLAB, R  

Find PDF Manuals for your Electronics using Amazon

If you are looking to download the user’s manual of an electronic product that you own but it is nowhere to be found on the manufacturer’s website, you might as well try a search on Amazon.com. The site hosts PDF manuals of thousands of electronic products including those of items that have either been discontinued or are no longer available for sale on Amazon.com. The user manuals are primarily hosted on two Amazon servers – images-amazon.com and ssl-images-amazon.com – and here’s how you can find the one you are looking for. Go to Google and type the following query. Replace Read more

MS Word: Track changes while you edit

You can easily make and view tracked changes and comments while you work in a document. By default, Microsoft Office Word 2007 uses balloons to display deletions, comments, formatting changes, and content that has moved. If you want to see all of your changes inline, you can change settings so that tracked changes and comments display the way you want. Website: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/word-help/track-changes-while-you-edit-HA001218690.aspx

Mac OS X Must Haves

A few friends have only recently become Mac-converts! I know! What took them so long?!?! Anyway, they always come with the same questions about 3rd party software etc- so here is a list of what I personally consider to be the must-have applications when you first get on your mac from another, strange operating system. Website: http://www.mattjarvis.co.uk/article/mac-os-x-must-haves

Dropbox – brilliant for sharing files

Your files, anywhere Any file you save to Dropbox also instantly saves to your computers, phones, and the Dropbox website. 2GB of Dropbox for free, with subscriptions up to 100GB available. Your files are always available from the secure Dropbox website. Dropbox works with Windows, Mac, Linux, iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry. Works even when offline. You always have your files, whether or not you have a connection. Dropbox transfers just the parts of a file that change (not the whole thing). Manually set bandwidth limits — Dropbox won’t hog your connection. Website: Dropbox Website: Dropbox for ucl.ac.uk email address Read more

FLV players for your website

The OS FLV Player is an Open Source, embedable player for Flash native video files. The player provides a large amount of options that can be changed in the embed code. Also provided are a code generator written in javascript, a library of PHP functions and, of course, fully open source code! Website: http://www.osflv.com With over one million active users, the JW Player™ is the Internet’s most popular open source video player. It supports playback of any format the Adobe Flash Player can handle (FLV, MP4, MP3, AAC, JPG, PNG and GIF) and now supports HTML5 too. Additionally, the JW Player™ Read more

Syphon

Syphon is an open source Mac OS X technology that allows applications to share frames – full frame rate video or stills – with one another in realtime. Now you can leverage the expressive power of a plethora of tools to mix, mash, edit, sample, texture-map, synthesize, and present your imagery using the best tool for each part of the job. Syphon gives you flexibility to break out of single-app solutions and mix creative applications to suit your needs. Syphon provides an ecosystem for sharing imagery between applications and new media development environments. Syphon is designed to be efficient and will Read more

Make: Electronics: Learning Through Discovery (book review)

Want to learn the fundamentals of electronics in a fun, hands-on way? With Make: Electronics, you’ll start working on real projects as soon as you crack open the book. Explore all of the key components and essential principles through a series of fascinating experiments. You’ll build the circuits first, then learn the theory behind them! Build working devices, from simple to complex You’ll start with the basics and then move on to more complicated projects. Go from switching circuits to integrated circuits, and from simple alarms to programmable microcontrollers. Step-by-step instructions and more than 500 full-color photographs and illustrations will Read more

Processing for the iPhone

The Processing Javascript library has been adapted for use on the iPhone. iProcessing is an open programming framework to help people develop native iPhone applications using the Processing language. It is an integration of the Processing.js library and a Javascript application framework for iPhone.

The Ultimate Dropbox Toolkit & Guide

Dropbox, the app we all (at least many of us) know and love, has a plethora of advanced uses to make life so much easier in managing data between multiple computers and online. We’ve posted several roundups of tips and tricks for Dropbox and now we present our ultimate toolkit and guide. We’ve pulled all our tips and tricks together and added quite a few more. Additionally, share your Dropbox tips and tricks and we’ll update the list to share the fun with everyone. Dropbox? Not familiar with Dropbox? Let me start out by simply saying, Dropbox is awesome. I Read more

Free alternative to Microsoft Office

The Document Foundation, which coordinates development of LibreOffice, a new, free and open office suite, has reached an important development milestone significantly ahead of schedule. LibreOffice 3.3 shipped this week; it’s the first, stable, road-ready version of the suite. A large, 100+ community of developers has been attracted to the project, and while it’s still clearly under construction, it’s an impressive showing in a short time. Website: http://www.libreoffice.org/download/

Create custom or global shortcuts that perform more complicated tasks on Mac

Macs have some great built-in keyboard shortcuts, but if you want to create custom or global shortcuts that perform more complicated tasks, you’ll need to do a little extra legwork. Here’s how to turn virtually any action into a keyboard shortcut Website: http://lifehacker.com/5749811/turn-any-action-into-a-keyboard-shortcut-on-your-mac?skyline=true&s=i

Software at UCL Clusters

There are many applications available at UCL Clusters that would be useful to Slade students, such as Photoshop It’s worth noting that some Clusters, such as those in UCL Libraries, are open 24 hours at certain times of year. Full list of software is on this webpage: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/staff/purchasing/software/software_bid/applications

Software UCL make available to students for home use

An up to date list of computer software available to UCL students for use on your own computer: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/students/windows/software Adobe Students get 80% off the retail price. Order direct from Adobe AutoCAD Free copies of AutoCAD is available to students from the AutoCAD website. Microsoft Microsoft are once again doing the Ultimate Steel For Office Mac

Open Street Block – lat/lon coordinate convertor

OpenStreetBlock is a web service for turning a given lat/lon coordinate (e.g. 40.737813,-73.997887) into a textual description of the actual city block to which the coordinate points (e.g. “West 14th Street bet. 6th Ave. & 7th Ave”) using OpenStreetMap data. There are likely many applications for such a service. It should be quite useful any time you might need to succinctly describe a given location without using a map. Website: http://transit.frumin.net/openstreetblock/

Arduino starting points

http://www.creativeapplications.net/category/objects/ http://arduino.cc/blog/category/artduino/ http://arduinoprojectspotter.com/ http://www.arduino.cc/playground/Projects/ArduinoUsers http://wn.com/Arduino_Art http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/arduino/

booru WebCam software

booru WebCam 2.0 will assist you in capturing images from your web camera, publishing them on your homepage, archiving them on your harddrive or storing them on the Internet. The program makes it easy to apply effects such as picture and text overlays to the camera image. The main purpose of booru Webcam is to increase the fun factor and usefulness of webcams! Party Cam: Use your web camera as a party cam, documenting the party to your local hard drive. You can later on look through the archive to find all the highlights from yesterday’s party. Or why not Read more

Rear projection film

Vikuiti Rear Projection Film uses the same micro bead technology as in 3M’s rigid screens but with a flexible, self-adhesive film that can be applied to windows or transparent partitions. It’s easy to cut to shape and size, is fast and easy to remove, and can be integrated with other window graphics.

FLOSS manuals

FLOSS Manuals is a collection of manuals about free and open source software together with the tools used to create them and the community that uses those tools. They include authors, editors, artists, software developers, activists, and many others. There are manuals that explain how to install and use a range of free and open source softwares, about how to do things (like design) with open source software, and manuals about free culture services that use or support free software and formats. Anyone can contribute to a manual – to fix a spelling mistake, to add a more detailed explanation, Read more

Final Cut Pro – Killer Secrets

Final Cut Pro Killer Secrets is a collection of tips, techniques and reference material that I’ve learnt, discovered or stumbled upon since 2003. The book is written primarily for Final Cut Pro 6 but virtually all the tips will work in earlier versions. Whether you’ve been working with Final Cut Pro for five months or five years. PDF: Final Cut Pro Killer Secrets